Congratulations to those of you who are graduating!
Before you move on from Harvard, find out what library access you’ll have after you leave: https://guides.library.harvard.edu/alums
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Monday, May 10, 4-5:30pm EST
A Clash of Clawed Significations: Reading and Rereading the Life of Yeshé Tsogyal and the Story of the Starving Tigress
For an eager bodhisattva intent on honing the virtue of generosity, there would appear to be no shortage of starving tigresses to feed, or so it must have seemed to Yeshé Tsogyal, an eighth-century tantric adept renowned for her role in disseminating Buddhism throughout Tibet. Within her earliest biography, the Life of Yeshé Tsogyal (14th century), she encounters an emaciated tigress on the verge of devouring her cubs—a tigress much like the one to whom the Buddha, in one of his previous lifetimes, fed his own body. But when Yeshé Tsogyal’s story is set against the Buddha’s, we see the tale take a remarkable turn. Where once a prince met his gory, albeit praiseworthy end, now a princess sees her shredded limbs restored by an act of truth and the kindness of a predator who plays against type.
Recasting Yeshé Tsogyal as the protagonist of the Tigress Jātaka—a popular, multiform tale that typically stars the Bodhisattva—might seem a curious choice on the part of the Life’s author, but ultimately, it is a brilliant intertextual move, one that stands to (1) mobilize in the model reader certain, perhaps otherwise mute, expectations vis-à-vis the figure of Yeshé Tsogyal and (2) resignify the familiar story of the starving tigress in tandem. After clarifying the relationship between these works, this talk will demonstrate how they stand to interanimate one another through a “clash of significations,” a process by which both stories emerge, in the end, more than the sum of their parts.
Elizabeth Angowski an Assistant Professor of Religion at Earlham College where she teaches courses on Buddhist ethics, hagiography, and religion and ecology. Her current research focuses on Tibetan literature and the figure of Yeshe Tsogyal.
Sign up here: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIlf-uhrj0pEtJNPDkKauJUrz48VK0pI_Gk
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Monday, May 10, 6:pm
The Place of Africa, in Theory
Shaden M. Tageldin (Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota)
Register in advance here. 
My focus will be on the writings of the Ottoman-Palestinian intellectual Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi, who served as consul general of the Ottoman Empire in Bordeaux from 1898–1908 and penned a pioneering study of French and Arabic comparative literatures. For al-Khalidi, France becomes a point of departure for virtual travel to and through the times and spaces that might reconstitute Africa as a vital part of Islamic historical memory, contemporaneity, and futurity. Marshaling narratives, maps, and expositions of architecture and built environments to restate the place of Africa in Islam and thus in theory, al-Khalidi calls on readers to peel away modern European colonial maps of Africa and to unearth the Arab-Islamic place names and African/Islamic empires those maps efface. I argue that the decolonizing impulses of his revisionist history, however, are cross-cut by the imperial competition for Africa between the European and Ottoman empires of his day—and his no less imperial fantasy that the soft powers of Arabic and Islam in Africa might intercept both.
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May 18, 12:30 PM
Art Talk Live: Reframing the Tianlongshan Cave Temple Fragments
Sarah Laursen, Alan J. Dworsky Associate Curator of Chinese Art, Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art
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May 20th, 4—5:30pm PDT / 7–8:30pm EDT
"Reimagine: A New Generation of Asian American Buddhists"
Author Chenxing Han in conversation with anthropologist Nalika Gajaweera.
(Registration forthcoming)
They will discuss Chenxing's recently published Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists (North Atlantic Books, 2021), the first book to center Asian American Buddhists as a pan-ethnic, pan-sectarian group. Be the Refuge counters the erasure of this complex and diverse group by resisting essentialized tropes (Oriental monk, superstitious immigrant, banana Buddhist) and reimagining Asian American Buddhists as trailblazers, bridge-builders, integrators, and refuge-makers.
Harvard Buddhist Community (HDS)
Radical Re-Orientation. The 2021 Buddhism and Race Speaker Series
https://buddhismandrace.com
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Graduate Opportunities
please note: additional graduate events and deadlines are available in the graduate weekly update
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Harvard University
Postdoctoral Writing Fellows - STEM, Social Sciences, Humanities
For the academic year 2021-2022, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) at Harvard University seeks postdoctoral fellows in STEM, Social Sciences, and Humanities to serve as Writing Specialists in GSAS’s newly merged office for writing and fellowships: the Fellowships & Writing Center. Discipline-specific writing specialists will assist students with all genres of academic writing, including fellowship proposals.
FWC postdoctoral fellows will work as members of a team reporting to the Center’s associate director and working closely with the executive director and the Academic Programs team in GSAS. Responsibilities will include offering regular individual consultations to GSAS students on papers, theses, dissertations, fellowship proposals, presentations, talks, and other modes of communication, as well as designing, promoting, and leading small group workshops and events that will help GSAS students to communicate their research in addition to leading small writing groups focused on accountability and building a community for student writers. Fellows could be asked to contribute to the development of customized research support for current students, working with faculty and administrators in their area of expertise, or in other ways contribute to the development of innovative programming, as appropriate and where needed. At this time, it is expected that Harvard will be operating in person starting in the fall semester 2021, and FWC Fellows will be expected to be available to work on campus in Cambridge. Opportunities for professional development will also be available to the Fellows.
Applicants must have already successfully defended their doctoral dissertations in order to be considered for the position.
Noel Bisson, Assistant Dean of Academic Programs
Contact Email bisson@fas.harvard.edu
Full details: https://academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/10282
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Northeastern University
PART-TIME LECTURER Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies
Deadline: May 26 2021
Master’s degree in appropriate field required; PhD with background in specific subject area preferred. Some college teaching experience desirable.
Details here.
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Deadline: May 30, 2021
Arizona State University Center for Jewish Studies
is now accepting applications for the
Salo Wittmayer Baron Dissertation Award in Jewish Studies.
The award is made possible by a generous gift from Dr. Shoshana B. Tancer and Robert S. Tancer z"l. Named for Shoshana Tancer’s father, Professor Salo Wittmayer Baron, the most important Jewish historian in the 20th century, the award is given to the best dissertation in the field of Jewish History and Culture in the Americas. A $5,000 award is granted every three years.
Dissertations completed at U.S. universities since the previous award was granted are eligible for submission. Dissertations currently eligible for submission, must be completed and accepted between June 2018 and May 2021.
Applicants should download and complete the cover sheet, and along with it, submit: a letter of nomination from the dissertation’s advisor a statement of application by the dissertation’s author, summarizing the contribution of the dissertation to Jewish History and Culture of the Americas, including applicant name, a hard copy of the dissertation mailed to the address below a digital copy of the dissertation to Lisa.Kaplan@asu.edu (subject line: Baron Dissertation Award Application) printed materials should be sent to: Salo Wittmayer Baron Dissertation Award c/o ASU Jewish Studies PO Box 874302 Tempe, AZ 85287-4302
Application must be received by May 30, 2021 | Awarded in Fall 2021
For more information and to download the cover sheet visit the website.
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